No matter what product or service you sell or what industry your business belongs to, providing quality information on your site or blog is important. For example, if your business provides travel-related services, it’s not a bad idea to provide users with the latest information from government departments and foreign travel offices, such as news or updates on travel warnings, advice from embassies, etc.

To create and publish this type of information, however, is very time-consuming. You have to sort through, research, and organize a lot of data, check your facts, write and edit content (or hire someone to do this for you), and then make sure that this information is continually kept up-to-date. As you can imagine, this is not only a lot of work but most of the information you are dealing with is entirely beyond your control.

Fortunately, there is a simpler way to continually provide your users with expert, up-to-date information.

It’s called RSS …

(RSS - One of the simplest ways to provide your subscribers with up-to-date information)

The Ultimate Guide To WordPress RSS

RSS – What Is It?

• RSS is an acronym for Rich Site Summary, or, as is more commonly known, Really Simple Syndication. It is also often called a “feed” or “web feed”.
• RSS lets content publishers automatically syndicate their content to save readers time from having to keep revisiting their site to check for updates.
• RSS feeds are often used to publish frequently updated information, such as new blog post items, news headlines, music playlists, etc., which users can choose to subscribe to.
• Essentially, an RSS feed is an XML document that includes either full or summarized text along with metadata such as date of publishing, author, etc. It allows people to subscribe to content on websites and then browse updates posted on these websites using an RSS feed reader. Conversely, RSS feeds also enable publishers to syndicate content automatically.
• Feeds can be made available in different types and read by different feed aggregators. Some of these include RSS feeds, Atom (also called AtomPub or APP feeds and RDF feeds. All of these formats, however, use a standard XML file format to ensure compatibility with different machines, readers, and programs.
• Many sites and software tools also allow you to combine multiple RSS feeds to display news and updates sourced from multiple sites.

In this detailed article, you are going to learn where your RSS feed is located, how to syndicate your content online using feeds, and how to add someone else’s content to your site using RSS feeds.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Feeds

Content syndication is a very powerful way of sharing content online. Feeds provide an easy way for web users to keep up with the latest information published on websites and blogs they are interested in.

First, let’s take a look at the concept of content syndication.

Global media publications use syndication to publish content from news sources all around the world.

Content syndication allows online newspapers and many leading online publications to deliver readers the latest stories and headlines from around the globe without having to employ more writers everywhere in the world …

(Digital publishers rely heavily on content syndication to publish newsworthy stories from other news agencies all around the planet.)

Syndication is a legitimate method of sharing information with other sites. Global media publications syndicate newsworthy content using feeds …

(Content syndication is used by global media publications to share content with other publications)

Most sites actually want you to syndicate their content. Syndicating content not only allows information to be shared, but it also sends visitors back to the site that originally created theoriginally created and published the content being syndicated. This can be an effective way to generate web traffic.

Most news reporting agencies and major sites have a feed section (look for navigation links that say “RSS” or “Newsfeeds” in them, or just search for “name of site/keyword + rss” – e.g. “nytimes rss”, “texas tribune rss”, “sydney morning herald rss”, etc.) …

(Most news reporting agencies and major online media publications have an RSS feed section. Image: Sydney Morning Herald )

Clicking on a site’s RSS links section brings up a list of different RSS feeds of the site …

(RSS directory. Image Source: New York Times RSS)

gives readers access to content from different areas of the site (e.g. technology news, arts news, health news, etc.)

A feed directory can also include feed subdirectories …

(RSS Feed section. Image Source: LA Times RSS)

Note: A feed is only a URL. To use the feed, all you have to do is copy the URL and paste it into software that can translate the feed into something readable. We’ll cover this further below.

The Benefits Of Content Syndication

Syndicating content from someone else’s website or blog on your website has some obvious benefits. It helps someone else’s site and adds value to your site without you having to create the content …

(Using RSS Feeds)

While adding an RSS feed from another site is a great way to add content to your site without having to create it, it’s worth keeping in mind that there are benefits in getting other sites to use your content.

When other websites and blogs syndicate content using your RSS feed, you have the opportunity to get more exposure online and drive new visitors …

(Get users to syndicate content using your feed … it will help drive more traffic to your site!)

Your WordPress RSS Feed

WordPress automatically publishes a feed of your posts, allowing others to easily syndicate your content on their websites and blogs.

Depending on your theme, there are a number of ways to access your WordPress RSS feed:

1) If your theme allows the Meta widget to display in a standard or custom menu, scroll down to the Meta section and click on Entries RSS …

(WordPress Meta widget – Entries RSS)

2) You can also find links and buttons on certain WordPress themes that let your visitors copy your feed.

In the screenshot below, for example, a visitor can simply copy the RSS feed URL by clicking on on the Subscribe to RSS link …

(Copy RSS URLs to your clipboard from “subscribe” buttons)

3) On many sites and again, depending on your WordPress site’s theme, you can find the RSS feed displayed in a Keep In Touch, Links, or Social Share section …

(Look for an RSS button in a a Follow, Links, or Social Share toolbar section)

4) You can also view your feed by typing your site’s URL into a web browser and adding “/feed” after the URL, e.g.:

• http://www.yourdomain.com/feed
• http://www.yourdomain.com/blog/feed (if your website or blog has been installed in a subdomain, e.g. “blog”)

Using any of the above methods will bring up a page containing your RSS …

(Feed entries displayed using Firefox)

Note that your feed page will display differently depending on the web browser you use …

(Feed entries displayed on Chrome browser)

Specify Number Of Items To Display On Your RSS Feed

To specify how many items you would like to show in your RSS Feed section, go to your Reading Settings section and select the number of items to show in the “Syndication feeds show the most recent” field …

(Settings – Reading Settings – Syndication feeds)

Your feed section will show the number of posts as you have specified in the WordPress Reading Settings section …

(Your feed will display the number of posts as you have specified in your Reading Settings section)

Display Full Text Or Summary Of Posts In Your RSS Feed

Another setting in the WordPress Reading Settings section that affects your feeds is whether to display your posts as full text, or just a summary …

(Settings – Reading Settings – ’For each article in a feed show’ options)

Post Excerpts can also affect how the content in your feed displays …

(Post excerpts affect how your feed content appears)

To learn more about Post excerpts, refer to this tutorial:

• Post Excerpts - A Tutorial

View The Content Of Your RSS Feeds

As mentioned earlier, all you have to do to view the content of a feed is to copy the feed’s URL and paste it into a feedreader, i.e. an application that translates feeds into readable content.

Let’s show you how this works.

First, find a website or blog and look for an RSS feed button using any of the methods described earlier …

(Look for a ’subscribe to feed’ button. Image source: YourCoffeeGuru.com)

Next, copy the feed URL to your clipboard …

(Copy the URL of your feed to your clipboard)

If you want, you can check the feed content by pasting the feed URL into a feed reader …

(Paste your URL of your feed into a feed reader to view the content. Image: Feedreader.com)

Like feedreaders, WordPress has the ability to process RSS feeds and convert these into human-readable content.

How To Add RSS Feeds To Your Site

Let’s show you how to add content from other website’s RSS feeds to your site.

How To Add A Feed To Your Sidebar

As mentioned earlier, no matter what industry your business is in, you could display on your site the latest news and updates from an industry-related government department or authoritative site in your industry by simply importing their feed. You can easily display a range of information on your WordPress site like news, social media updates, or content from thousands of sites using the WordPress RSS widget.

Let’s add content sourced from an RSS feed to your sidebar …

(Let’s add an RSS feed to your sidebar)

First, go to a website that publishes content that you want to add to your site and copy its RSS feed URL to your clipboard …

(Copy the URL of your feed)

Next, log into your wordPress Dashboard and go to Appearance > Widget paste the feed into a new RSS widget …

(Widgets Section – RSS Widget)

To learn more about adding content to sidebars using widgets, go here:

• How To Use Widgets In WordPress

Refresh your web browser. The content from the RSS feed should now appear on the sidebar …

(RSS Feed Added To WP Sidebar Menu)

Add Your WordPress RSS Feed To Search Consoles

You can add your WordPress RSS feed to Google and Bing’s search consoles. This will help them index your content faster.

(WordPress RSS feed added to Google Search Console)

Adding your site’s RSS feed to search consoles is simple, fast, easy, and requires no technical skills. For a step-by-step tutorial, go here:

• How To Set Up Webmaster Accounts

Adding Content From RSS Feeds To Your Posts

Can you add content from RSS feeds to posts instead of a sidebar? You sure can!

You can easily do this using plugins. Search on WordPress.org plugin repository for RSS, RSS feed to post, etc.

(’Add Plugins’ section)

Note: Most RSS plugins typically require configuration – visit the plugin sites for instructions, or contact us for assistance with plugin configuration.

The plugins listed below are useful if you want to add feed content to posts, or “auto blog” (An autoblog is a blog with content that is automatically gathered and compiled from RSS feeds):

WPeMatico

(WPeMatico Plugin For WordPress)

WPeMatico is an easy to use auto blogging plugin that allows you to publish posts automatically from selected RSS/Atom feeds.

You can manage all of your imported feeds and organize feeds according to campaigns.

For more details, go here:

• WPeMatico Plugin

WP RSS Aggregator

(WP RSS Aggregator – WordPress Plugin)

WP RSS Aggregator is a comprehensive RSS feed importer and auto blogging WordPress plugin that offers a number of premium add-ons for additional functionality.

For example, the Feed to Post extension for the WP RSS Aggregator plugin lets you add content to your site automatically by importing RSS feeds directly into your WP posts.

For more details, go here:

• WP RSS Aggregator Plugin For WordPress

RSS Post Importer

(RSS Post Importer Plugin)

RSS Post Importer can be used to curate, syndicate, import, merge and display full-text RSS feeds on your WordPress site.

The plugin will fetch an RSS feed and publish the entire content of each feed item as a standalone post.

For more details, go here:

• RSS Post Importer – WordPress Plugin

Powr RSS Feed

(Powr RSS Feed Plugin)

POWr RSS allows you to combine content from a number of different RSS feeds.

This plugin also lets you display videos, images, and articles, adjust sizing and spacing of feeds, use custom colors, backgrounds, fonts, and more. It also displays feeds correctly on any phone, tablet, or computer and supports text in every language.

The premium version contains a number of additional features.

For more details, go here:

• Powr RSS Feed

WP Pipes

(WP Pipes Plugin For WordPress)

The WP Pipes plugin for WordPress is a powerful data migration plugin that lets you create curate content from RSS feeds, Google News, and many other sources.

This plugin provides loads of functionality like CSV importing for posts/WooCommerce, RSS feed creator, autoblogging, auto post to Facebook/LinkedIn/Twitter, export posts as podcasts, create Google XML sitemaps, and help take your WordPress CMS to new levels.

For more details, go here:

• WP Pipes

FeedWordPress

(FeedWordPress WordPress Plugin)

FeedWordPress provides versatile syndication for WordPress-generated content.

As stated in the FeedWordPress website …

FeedWordPress is an open-source Atom/RSS aggregator for the WordPress blog publishing platform. You set up feeds that you choose, and FeedWordPress syndicates posts from those sources into your WordPress posts table, where they can be displayed by your WordPress templates like any other post — but with additional meta-data, so that your templates can properly attribute the post to the source it came from.

You can use this plugin to create aggregator sites, or bring together all of your online activity into a Lifestream.

For more details, go here:

• FeedWordPress WordPress Plugin

Autoblog

(Autoblog by WPMUDev Plugin)

Autoblog is an easy-to-use plugin that can be set-up in minutes, without coding skills or complicated instructions. Just copy and paste in your feed URL, give the feed a name of your choosing (for admin purposes) and select the blog that you want it to post to.

For more details, go here:

• Autoblog by WPMUDev

RSS Includes Pages

(RSS Includes Pages)

By default, WordPress only posts posts in your RSS feed. Install RSS Includes Pages to include pages in your RSS feed in addition to posts.

For more details, go here:

• RSS Includes Pages

Using WordPress RSS Feeds – Useful Tips

Tip #1 – Comment RSS Feeds

In addition to displaying RSS feeds of your latest posts, WordPress also makes available RSS feeds of your post comments.

You can view your comments feed by clicking on Comments RSS in the ‘Meta’ section of your sidebar …

(Comments Feed)

Comments posted on your site by visitors can be seen in your Comments RSS page …

(RSS comments feed items as seen using a Firefox web browser)

Like post entries, your comments feed page will display differently depending on which web browser you use …

(RSS comments feed content viewed on Google Chrome)

Again, you can check the feed content by pasting the feed URL into an online feedreader …

(Paste the comments feed URL into a feed reader to view the feed content. Image Source: Feedreader.com)

Note: If the Meta section is not displaying on your theme, you can view the Comments RSS section of your site by opening up a browser and typing in the following URL:

• http://www.yourdomain.com/comments/feed
• http://www.yourdomain.com/blog/comments/feed (if your website has been installed in a subfolder, e.g. “blog”)

Tip #2 – Using Feeds For Single Posts

Being able to select an RSS feed for an individual post can be useful. For example, you may want to add feeds from specific items to RSS aggregator sites, or you may have created a valuable resource that other online users will want to syndicate.

The formula for displaying an RSS feed for an individual post is shown below:

(RSS Feed For Specific Post Item)

To create the above feed, copy the post URL, and append “/feed/?withoutcomments=1” to the end.

(Single Post Feed)

Note: By default, if you only append “/feed” to the end of the URI of your post, WordPress will return the comments left on your post, not actual content of the post itself.

Tip #3 – Using Post Category RSS Feeds

Some your site users may only want to subscribe to content from one or two post categories. They may not want to subscribe to your entire site’s feed.

If your site publishes content under many categories, you can offer visitors a separate feed for each of these categories.

All you need to do is use the format shown below:

(Format for WP post categories feed)

Copy the category link address to your clipboard …

(Select and copy your category URL …)

Append “feed” to the end of it …

(WordPress category feed format)

The category RSS feed now only includes content assigned to this category …

(Category RSS feed)

The WordPress Codex also provides different ways to create feeds not just for post categories, but also feeds for tags, authors, search, etc.

For this example, let’s create a feed for a specific post category using the format shown below:

(Post Category feed format. Source: WordPress Codex)

Here is the feed format WordPress recommends using. In this example, the post category ID is ’42’. We’ll need to replace the post category ID and the domain name …

(WordPress post category feed format)

To find the post category ID, go to Posts > Categories …

(Posts > Categories menu)

Locate the post category you want and hover your mouse over the title to reveal its unique ID …

(Post Category ID)

In our example, the post category ID is ’29’ and the post category feed format we need to use for this specific category with our domain name looks like this …

(Post category feed format with domain name and ID)

Copy and paste the feed into your browser and hit enter …

(Paste the feed into your browser)

This will display the feed for that specific category …

(RSS feed of a specific post category)

Note that in this example, WordPress automatically converted the feed format we pasted into the browser into the category feed we had used in the previous section of this tutorial …

(Post category feed format)

Here is the feed format again …

(Post category feed)

In this case, the simplest way to create additional feeds for specific categories is to simply change the post category slug …

(Change the post category slug to create a new category specific feed)

Paste the edited feed into your web browser and hit enter to display the content for that specific category’s feed …

(Post category feed content)

Now that you have a method for creating feeds for specific post categories (or tags, authors, etc.), you can even create a directory or list of individual feeds for visitors.

Tip #4 – Set Up Your Own Page Of RSS Feeds For Your Site Visitors

You can set up a feeds list that allows readers to subscribe to content in the categories they are interested in …

(Publish A Directory Of RSS Feeds For Your Visitors)

You can also link an RSS button image like the one shown below to each feed URL and then create a table or a list of your feeds on a new page …

(RSS button. Image: http://www.public-domain-photos.com/free-cliparts/computer/other/rss_button_roman_bertle_01-2522.htm)

To learn more about creating tables in WordPress pages and posts, go here:

• How To Create And Add Tables To WordPress Content

RSS – Additional Notes

Feeds can be customized in various different ways, such as adding images to feeds, ads, etc. Some of these customizations require code editing skills.

WordPress allows you to configure a number of different feed formats that do not require touching code. Below are examples of some of the kinds of feeds you can use …

(WordPress RSS – Feed Types)

Here are the feed types, descriptions, and feed examples listed above:

• Feed Type: All Posts
• Description: Content feed – Feed that contains your latest post entries
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/

• Feed Type: All Comments
• Description: Comments feed – RSS feed displaying the latest comments left on your site
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/comments/feed/

• Feed Type: Individual Posts
• Description: Feed for single posts
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/title-of-your-blog-post/feed/

• Feed Type: Individual Posts Comments
• Description: Feed for the latest comments made on single items
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/blog-post-title/feed/

• Feed Type: Archives
• Description: Day – Contains the latest items in each archive
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2018/05/10/feed/

• Feed Type: Archives
• Description: Month – Displays latest post entries in each archive
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2015/11/feed/

• Feed Type: Archives
• Description: Year – RSS feed that displays latest posts in each archive
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/2011/feed/

• Feed Type: Search Results
• Description: Includes the latest posts for a search query
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/search/term/feed/

• Feed Type: Custom Post Type
• Description: Displays the latest post entries for a custom type (e.g. book)
• Example Feed: http://yourdomain.com/feed/?post_type=book

One more thing …

It’s a good idea to let users know that they can subscribe to your RSS feed. Make sure you place your subscribe button in a visible location …

(Encourage visitors to syndicate your feeds!)

Also, keep in mind that online users will only syndicate your content if you provide your subscribers with very high-quality information that can add great value to their sites and benefit their visitors.

(Easily add great content from other sites and get other sites to share your content with RSS feeds!)

If you need great content ideas subscribe to our FREE content creation course using the form below:

Also, don’t forget to subscribe to our feed 🙂

Additional Resources:

• RSS Graphics – Visit Iconspedia or search online (e.g. “free RSS icons”, “RSS icon”, etc.) for sites containing downloadable Free RSS graphic elements.
• RSSBoard.org – The RSS Advisory Board provides useful information and links to resources about RSS.
• Wikipedia/RSS – Learn more about the history and benefits of using RSS feeds.
• WordPress.org – Official WordPress documentation and reference. Go here for more information about WordPress RSS.

Congratulations! Now you know how to find your WordPress RSS feed, how to use your WordPress RSS feed to get your content syndicated online, and how to display someone else’s content on your site using RSS.

Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of problems that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you build a better business online. To learn more about the benefits of using WordPress please see our related posts section.

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